Strategy and numerical modelling of a vehicle seat with a lightweight sandwich design for large-scale production

A lightweight vehicle front seat with a sandwich structure, which consists of skin layers made of glass fibre-reinforced thermoplastic prepregs and a core consisting of a warp knitted spacer fabric filled with polyurethane foam, was developed. The strength test simulations of the seat structure were performed using a Finite Element Analysis approach. The results validate the new sandwich design of the vehicle seat with its adequate strength under a static load. With the innovative lightweight design, the mass of the seat was reduced up to 57 % in comparison to the reference seat from conventional mass production. In addition, a manufacturing process was advised for a large-scale production of the lightweight design within one workstation.